Honda - and schools - beat Ferrari at Indy.

The Honda Racing F1 team beat off stiff opposition from Scuderia Ferrari, plus the lesser-known Bradfield Panthers and East Cobb Flying Cougars to record the fastest time of the day at Indianapolis to start the US Grand Prix weekend on top.

Instead of the Formula One event, however, the Brackley-based team triumphed with its miniature racer in the F1 in Schools event held as a precursor to the grand prix itself.

Teams from Honda and Ferrari took up the challenge to build scale model racers to compete against the national F1 in Schools champions from the USA and UK in a showcase for the F1 in Schools Formula One Technology Challenge, a global competition which aims to help youngsters get to grips with engineering and science with a fun element attached.

A purpose-built 20-metre track was set up at the famed American facility to test the speed of 1:20 scale models, all of which were built from balsa wood and powered by CO2 gas, and F1 in Schools founder Andrew Denford admitted that it had been a unique opportunity to showcase the initiative.

"The participation of Honda and Ferrari has helped us to put our initiative into the spotlight and we hope that this will, in turn, encourage more students and schools to participate in the Challenge," he said, "My thanks go to Bernie Ecclestone, for giving us so much support and enabling us to make this challenge happen and also to Ferrari and Honda Racing F1 for being brave enough to take up the offer of building a car and racing it, untried, in public.

"I think the teams have seen that there are school children preparing to follow in their footsteps and, through F1 in Schools, have been enthused about engineering. Both teams
have shown the students that F1 technical teams are also the heroes of Formula One and should be aspired towards. It's been a once-in-a- lifetime experience for our student teams today."

The British car built by the Bradfield Panthers, and that of US rivals East Cobb Flying Cougars, had already proved their speed, winning their respective national championships
earlier this year. However, the F1 teams' cars, built by young designers in their spare time, were unproven until the afternoon of the competition.

The Honda team, led by Gil de Ferran, and Ferrari, headed by Ross Brown, had both produced cars with unique designs, reflecting the innovative approaches used within Formula One, and it was Honda which ultimately posted the fastest time of 1.146secs, close to the current world record time held by a Malaysian team at 1.083secs.

Bradfield Panthers proved to be the biggest threat to the F1 team but, in the final run-off, the Brits couldn't match the pace, recording a time of 1.157secs to claim the runner-up spot. The Flying Cougars then got the better of multiple F1 champions Ferrari to claim third spot in the four-car competition.

Bradfield admitted that it was impressed with the Honda car and said that it planned to use some of its design elements to upgrade their racer before their participation in the World Championships in Melbourne next year.

"It's been a great experience to race against real F1 teams," Bradfield's Brad McAnearney said, "We were a bit disappointed that we didn't win, but we've learnt so much from talking to the designers and having a close look at their race cars, that it will help us for the World Championships."